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appearance. Almost nothing's known about them, yet one shows up after lunch on a warm August day and you're familiar with its command history."
    "Fleet doesn't tell all its secrets, Bill," said S'Rel with a shrug. "No government does, as you well know."
    "Bullshit, buddy," said Sutherland, standing. "While you were supervising the cleanup of our Amazon village, I took two squads on a last sweep of the area. Just for the hell of it, I decided to have another look at that anaconda. And guess what? It must have just been killed before I shot it—crushed. What I saw and reacted to were its death throes."
    "So?" said the K'Ronarin.
    "So what are you, S'Rel?" continued Sutherland calmly. "Not human, certainly. Not a S'Cotar or the alarms would be ringing. That leaves only one known possibility."
    S'Rel leaped the desk—an effortless, standing broad jump, done with only a slight flexing of the knees, the landing soft and silent. "An AI, right, Bill?" he said as Sutherland pressed against the glass wall, face as white as the ceiling tiles.
    "God deliver us from monsters," whispered the CIA director.
    Laughing, S'Rel stepped back a pace. "You're a paunchy, middle-aged bureaucrat, Sutherland," he said. "But you have style and you have guts." He held out his hand. "Welcome to the Revolt."
    "Well, we've boarded her," said S'Tat as Repulse settled onto the steel surface of the battleglobe. Two miles long and of proportional length and breadth, the K'Ronarin ship was just another machine on the bleak, airless surface of the machine fortress: fusion batteries with cannon half the cruiser's length, ugly black snouts pointing toward the shimmering blue of the shield; instrument pods and the domes of missile turrets, the largest of them the height of Repulse, interspacing the fusion batteries in row after serried row all the way to the horizon.
    "Nice place," said Captain P'Qal, watching the outside scan move across the bridge's main screen. "That, I gather, is the operations tower," he said, as the scan stopped, holding on the great black structure dwarfing the hull structures. Square and windowless, it seemed almost to touch the shield.
    "What's that on the top?" said S'Tat, frowning as she zoomed the scan. A stiff duraplast flag leaped into focus—silver and black, with a single golden dagger lying horizontally in its middle. "That looks familiar," she said uncertainly.
    "It's the battle flag of our Confederation," said P'Qal. "Find out if they're sending someone to get us, or if we have to walk. And tell S'Yatan to maintain position."
    They sent someone to get them: K'Raoda. He arrived in a transit tube that extended its serpentine self from the sheer wall of the tower to the cruiser's emergency bridge access. "Sorry about this," he said, leading P'Qal and S'Yatan through the luminescent green tube. "There're selective atmospheric controls, but they took hits in the fighting —we've been busy repairing the fusion batteries and power leads."
    P'Qal shook his head, not sure which had impressed him more about K'Raoda—the boyish features and easy grin or the crimson-hung silver Valor Medal around the Commander's neck. The captain shook his head. "Amazing."
    A few moments later they entered the tower and began trudging up a broad circular ramp, passing men and women in K'Ronarin uniform who nodded hastily and hurried by, distracted, or ignored the newcomers, intent on battle repairs.
    Every level bore signs of recent combat: walls and floors gouged by the black gashes of blaster hits, shattered instrument alcoves, and here and there, missed in the hurried cleanup, the shattered remains of what must have been complex mobile machinery—AIs? wondered P'Qal. He was about to ask when they topped the ramp and reached the heart of the battleglobe, the bridge of the operations tower.
    The armored double doors that had once guarded the bridge were all but gone—a perfectly symmetrical hole having devoured most of the battlesteel. "Glad we missed